The biggest menace to the Music Industry is not piracy, but it is the Music Industry itself.
I have sat back, watched, and stayed silent as the Music Industry has executed a modern day witch hunt on file sharing services. Between the lawsuits and propaganda, one thing has become clear: The Music Industry cares more about making money than it does about making music. That statement may not hit as hard as I would like it to, so let me rephrase it: If the Music Industry could make more money through prostitution, they would run the biggest whorehouse this world has ever seen.
It does not matter if an artist has passion or talent; just as long as he matches the profile of the next big trend. By matching the trends, the Music Industry is trying to ensure that they will make money. And when the Music Industry does not guess the trends correctly or the trends happen to change, they blame it on Internet piracy. Before that, they blamed it on tape and CD copying.
Pump out the trendy CDs. Get the money. If the money does not come, blame it on the pirates. Repeat process.
The evidence of this endless cycle is smacking the world so hard in the face that we are all very sore. The Industry as a whole cares nothing for establishing artists that will last or creating memorable music that will be listened to for generations to come... unless it will make them money.
The Music Industry has been losing money for the past three years and using Internet Piracy as the scapegoat. I am here to tell the world that the Music Industry, and all who believe their propaganda, that you are deceiving yourselves.
People will buy quality CDs I, like most people, bought only one CD last year. I opted not to pay the outlandish 19 bucks for The Scorpion King soundtrack and, instead, bought The Eminem Show.
For those of you who don't remember the drama at the time, Eminem's new CD was scheduled for a June 4th release date. Two months beforehand, the entire CD was available on the Internet and fans were downloading. In a panic, Interscope Records decided to release the CD earlier than previously announced. Then, panicking even more, Interscope Records released the album a week earlier than the new date without announcement, causing the company to lose millions in planned promotion.
It was a Saturday when I noticed that The Eminem Show was suddenly available. I immediately bought a copy. As the cashier checked me out, he mentioned that he had the whole album downloaded a month ago. I asked him if he planned on buying the album too, and he said, "Hell, yeah."
Even though the album was loosely available throughout the States for only three days of that week, it sold 285,000 copies and took the number one spot on the Billboard's chart for that week. The album went on to hold the number one spot for nearly two months. Ten months later, the album is ranking in at number 16.
Not only that, but The Eminem Show sold 7.6 million copies during 2002 to be the biggest selling album of the year. The second bestselling album in 2002 only sold 4.6 million.
Album sales as a whole have plunged 10.9% since last year. But, when everyone talks about the album sales of 2002, they always say something along the lines of, "Album sales were horrible last year, Eminem excluded."
Why? Why would they exclude Eminem? All of these people who have reviewed the top selling albums of 2002 have missed the whole point. When they say "Eminem excluded," they are really saying that the only artist that put out a decent album last year was Eminem. And, for the most part, it's true.
This is what everyone is missing. People complain about how the Music Industry pumps out crappy CDs with one decent song on each one. They then expect us to pay 16-19 dollars for said piece of crap. But none of these people are pointing out that Eminem put out a CD last year with 20 solid tracks and people bought it even though they already downloaded it two months earlier. They also neglect to mention that Eminem's last CD sold 7.9 million copies during 2000 at the height of downloading from Napster.
So am I saying that Eminem is the only decent artist, right now? No. Eminem is the only decent artist that the Music Industry is currently backing properly. He is the only one that the Music Industry has taken a chance to get his name out so people will buy his CD. Even with Internet piracy running rampant, even with a struggling economy, even with a whoring Music Industry, Eminem proved that people will still buy a quality CD.
And if the Music Industry cannot see that, they deserve to continue to lose money until prostitution is legalized.
